


Why Storms Are Named After People

by apollos



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurricanes, Inspired by Real Events, Opaque Metaphors, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:53:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hurricane Arthur comes and goes. Merlin deals with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Storms Are Named After People

It’s mentioned in passing, a single line in the newspaper: _Tropical Storm Arthur takes Florida_. Merlin isn’t even in the United States—he’s in a tiny pub in Britain, holed up in the corner, reading the daily paper. The patrons think he’s homeless and he’s happy to keep that image up, happy to make himself appear with knobby fingers and a long, white beard. Sometimes children point at him and call him Dumbledore, Gandalf, any other wizard they can think of, and he has a good laugh.

He is not laughing right now. He is staring at the page. _Tropical Storm Arthur_. Arthur isn’t a rare name, and over the years Merlin has become more and more accustomed to hearing it, reading it, meeting it, but something about this combination of words sticks with him. Saddens him. Arthur isn’t even a hurricane—he’s a feeble tropical storm, barely above standard summer rain. He is tempted, just for a moment, to use some magic and elevate the storm levels as a proper honoring. Morals restrict him.

He puts the paper down, finishes his tea and leaves the pub.

* * *

When Merlin reads the paper in a few days and see that Arthur is indeed now a hurricane he feels guilty. Like it was his fault. Maybe some magic escaped him while he was sleeping from deep in his subconscious—that used to happen when he was young, a sort of power puberty, but he’s long passed that. He has control. He stares out the pub window, watches a light rain crawl down grimy glass, and tells himself it’s not his fault. _It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault_. It’s just fate.

* * *

Merlin tracks Arthur. He uses his laptop at home and prints out every visible movement of the storm, taping them to his wall. He makes a slideshow of them, a stop-motion film of the storm.  _Arthur_ . He whispers the name as he runs his fingers over the trajectory.  _Arthur_ . He feels his emotions surging with the storm, but even at its highest point he won’t let himself think it.  _Arthur_ .

It’s a storm named by humans. It’s meaningless. It could’ve as easily have been Anthony or Andrew or Austin. The name Arthur means nothing. Arthur, _his_ Arthur, will not emerge from this storm like a god out of a Greek myth, dressed in chainmail and wielding his sword. That will not happen. Merlin sits in the middle of his dusty floor with storm-watcher papers strewn all about and crosses his legs, starts to meditate, starts to levitate. Arthur is not coming back. Not today. Not in this storm.

* * *

The hurricane passes. It fades back into a tropical storm; despite being the first of a season, it is unmemorable. There are no causalities. No great destruction. A lot of hype over nothing in a country Merlin does not live in.

Arthur does not return, soiling expectations Merlin tried not to have.

He magics the papers out of existence, deletes the storm-watching websites from his Internet history. Sits on his couch among mottled afghans with a steaming mug of tea in his hand and his feet curled underneath him. Thinks. Thinks about the poetic qualities of a storm. Thinks about the poetic qualities of Arthur. Thinks about them in conjunction.

Arthur, the man, held a storm inside him, something fierce, something that would’ve broke category system, something Merlin could see brewing in his eyes. Strength, speed, agility, passion, conviction, force—qualities of a hurricane; qualities of Arthur; not qualities of Hurricane Arthur. If Arthur the man had released the storm inside him—had opened his mouth and screamed it out—it would have destroyed the fucking _world_. After all, Merlin had held Arthur. Held him while he died. Held him while the storm inside him flickered out of existence, went from raging to a roar to a whisper to nothing at all. Not a voluntary release, but still—it had destroyed Merlin’s world.

Merlin knows the qualities, poetic and prosaic, of Arthur the man inside and out. Merlin can pick his voice from a crowd of a million people, can recognize his eyes in an ocean of blue, can feel for his hands if hands were the only thing he could feel. When you tend to a man as much as Merlin had tended to Arthur, over years and hills, through the good and the bad, you cannot help this level of intimacy. Merlin had tried to tend to the storm—had tried to learn its qualities, had tried to build that intimacy, _had tried to coax Arthur out of its eye as if the will of his want could do such a thing_ —but, well, he had failed.

 _It’s not your fault._ A slow sip of the tea that burns his tongue. A natural tightening of the fingers. A gentle closing of the eyes. _It’s fate_.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't often do vignettes (I am a wordy writer) but I felt this story was best served by this format. I'm probably not the first person to have dealt with this but, well, I saw the opportunity for some opaque metaphor action and I took it. Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
